Six Things That No One Ever Told You About Marijuana

Marijuana addiction? Sounds like two words that do not seem to go together. You cannot really get addicted to it, right? Marijuana is not like cigarettes with their nasty nicotine - it's actually more "recreational" and even "medical"-right? {mosimage}

Watch enough movies and television and you may get the idea that behind closed doors across America, everyone's toking up-as if it were a dirty little secret that even the most normal of folks kept to themselves, although their close friends "might have known..." But here are six things no one ever told you about marijuana - the real dirty little secrets of marijuana itself.

Marijuana has its own marketing campaign. Whether Madison Avenue ad men sit around large polished wooden tables in their suits and put together focus groups and smile happily at revenue charts is not the point. But look around and you will see a campaign does exist, complete with late night talk show hosts implying their closet use of it, famous singers and actors extolling its virtues so much so that it feels like the "undrug"- positioned apart from those "other, more dangerous" ones and gobbling up its own special piece of market share in your mind. Not as dangerous? Keep reading...

It has real withdrawal symptoms. Researchers at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts and Columbia University in New York City found that regular smokers of marijuana who stop smoking it indeed experience withdrawal. Additionally, studies have shown that aggression, anxiety, stomach pain and increased irritability manifest themselves during abstinence from the drug.

It speeds up your heart. Marijuana use actually increases the heart rate as much as 50 percent. Not only that: it can cause chest pain in people who have a poor blood supply to the heart-and it does so much more rapidly than tobacco smoke can do.

Stoners aren't just "cute" in their goofiness - they actually do get lower grades, and they are less likely to graduate from high school than their non-smoking peers, studies show. For heavy smokers-those who smoke it nearly every day-critical skills related to attention, memory and learning are significantly impaired even after they had not used the drug for at least 24 hours

That 'medical marijuana' is safe is a lie. In fact, no where is it even legal. The US Food and Drug Administration has never approved marijuana for any use. It is a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act, with high potential for abuse just like Cocaine, Heroin and LSD. Benefits claimed by medical marijuana proponents: the THC in marijuana provides relief of nausea due to cancer chemotherapy and reduces intraocular (inside the eye) pressure due to glaucoma. However, approved and effective medications to relieve these symptoms have been available for quite some time. Marinol, containing synthetic THC, is taken (not smoked) in controlled doses. But even this medication has side effects including paranoid reaction, drowsiness and abnormal thinking. Studies have shown that real THC as found in marijuana is actually a neurotoxin, a substance that damages or impairs the functions of nerve tissue. And to get this neurotoxin from marijuana, you'll also need to be willing to ingest more than

400 other chemicals found in marijuana.

Marijuana effectively cuts you off from others. It might seem social to pass the dutchie on the left hand side, but burned out users are so unaware of their surroundings that they do not respond when friends speak to them, and do not realize they even have a problem. Marijuana compromises ones ability to learn, to remember information and-the more it is used-the more likely it is that a user will fall behind in accumulating intellectual, job or social skills.

Tony Bylsma CCDC, is a rehabilitation counselor and drug prevention speaker in Los Angeles. Blog: http://www.detoxrehab.org. Website: http://www.drugindependence.org

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